A memory. 3 years past. Sunday Morning. I'm sitting looking out my window like I like to do. There's plenty to look at but not much to see. Mostly just trees, birds and other tree dwelling wildlife. Then there's the apartment building across, just far enough away to afford privacy but near enough to provide innoccuous voyeuristic distraction - Like a tv set with no more than 2-3 channels all showing simultaneously on different screens. Scenes of staid domesticity on a daily basis. Mostly just static.
I mostly watch the couple on the first floor. They're my favourite show. Both probably in their 30s, they seem successful enough without being flash, attractive enough without being glamorous, cool enough without being hip. The average DINK couple, I suppose. As it turns out this morning's episode is called 'Cleaning Day.' This should be fun.
She's in shorts and Tshirt, thin and determined. He's big and ill at ease. Reluctant to say the least. This is obvioulsy not his idea of the ideal Sunday morning. She looks grim and faintly possessed as she contemplates strategy and starts the assault on whatever grime and grease may have accumulated in her kitchen.
He's in a state of suspended animation. You can tell he's lost; like he'd like to help but he cant read the instruction manual - it's in female. Clearly out of his league, he stands hovering motionlessly just inside the kitchen door. You can tell he's going for one of two possible outcomes with this tactical maneuver.
Scenario #1. - Delusional: He's hoping his mere presence in the kitchen at the time of cleaning will satisfactorily count in her mind as an actual contribution to the work. The theory is that this would leave her happy and unshrill while giving him that warm and fuzzy feeling of being useful without actually having had to do anything unpleasant. (Highly unlikely, but hope is that thing with feathers...)
Scenario #2. - Practical: Failing ideal scenario #1. he's hoping that being a huge, lumbering hunk of stupid will infuriate her enough that she'll refuse his help and throw him out of the kitchen. In which case he can safely and guiltlessly go back to whatever it is he'd have liked to have been doing in the first place.
He understands that while this scenario precludes the advantages of 'happy & unshrill' and 'warm & fuzzy' it still manages to circumvent the 'death & destruction' that might result from the implementation of Scenario #3. (Scenario #3. - Unthinkable - In this fictitious scenario, he simply refuses to help with the kitchen and instead prepares himself for full scale nuclear attack and subsequent annihilation.)
Meanwhile, she's been venting her frustrations on the kitchen windowsill looking demented and vaguely pissy, like she's wondering where she can go to get a refund on the strong, sensitive, gallant and ridiculously house-broken hunk of man Mills & Boon promised her. So she scrubs away, ferocious, twitching like an angry epileptic and he skulks around guiltily in the background, twitching like a rabbit in heroin withdrawal. They look like secret adversaries.
But then it changes. Her shoulders relax. She capitulates. She turns around and gives him simple instruction. He follows. He looks vaguely relieved. That wasn't so difficult. She directs him again. He follows, soon looking almost eager. He starts small - lift this, reach for that. Gradually he gets more involved - adding suggestions, taking initiative, solving problems and by and by I see them come together; coalesce into a team and attack that kitchen with joint vengeance.
Before long, there's horse play and soon they're both smiling and then laughing and then having plain ol' fun. In between cleaning and having water fights and dust-rag duels they grin at each other, looking a little bemused that they're having such a good time cleaning a kitchen; pleasantly surprised that together they've just managed to turn a dull annoying chore into quality family time.
And I'm sitting there in my window watching shamelessly and thinking - This is nice. This is what makes being in relationships worth it, I guess - the fact that even unpleasant jobs can be turned on their heads and made sufferable and even enjoyable because they were shared by two people who exercised their caring for one another. How nice.
With a warm, fuzzy, wistful feeling I realize - this is a phone company commercial. (You know the ones - so treacherously manipulative that you find yourself saddled with a family & friends talk-plan that you won't use all because what you really wanted to have was the family and friends featured in the commercial.) Only this is not a commercial. This is in the flesh. Real.
And predictably, almost on cue, I'm about to tailspin into a maudlin and prolonged spasm of dejected singlegirlhood when I realize something.
If they were looking out their window at me, they'd see a single girl with no responsibility more pressing than lounging by an open window, listening to Nina Simone while drinking coffee and looking out at the world...I'm probably their gourmet Brazilian coffee commercial.
